Three times now (this week…) I have left the house in my pajamas. The first was on Wednesday when I went to pick Shane up from Sasha’s house. They were having Jew Appreciation night at his house since I had turned ours into the IKEA sale pictured in the previous post.

We had left Shane’s car at his work because A: he currently has no air conditioning and B: he was planning on dragging me out of bed at 5:30 to go get his Droid X. So that meant that at 11:30 at night, I was walking out to my car in a tank top, very thin pj bottoms, a robe, and my flip flops. Of course, this just happened to coincide with our next door neighbors arriving home so they got to see me in all of my glory. (Actually, the fact that I have trouble remembering that I shouldn’t walk by open windows before I get dressed probably has half the neighborhood seeing me in all my glory. I’m a peeping tom’s dream!) But I held my head high and walked straight to my car. Then when we got home, they were STILL out there. Probably hoping for a repeat performance. So before we got out of the car I told Shane to act drunk. “Then I can pretend that I just went to drag your drunk ass off the bar stool and bring you home to your family.” His drinking upsets the kitties.

The second and third times were yesterday. After being dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn, I was exhausted and working on a migraine so I stayed home from school. I finally decided that a nap was in order around 4:17. At 4:46, I woke up to a downpour that rivaled the rain I saw when I was caught in a hurricane in Florida. My first groggy thought was “Wow, it’s really storming out there.” Quickly followed by a not-so-groggy “Oh sh*t, my car windows are open!!!!” That is the last time I listen to wunderground.com. 30% chance of precipitation they said. Apparently in Indiana, 30% is code for 110%.

Worst times to not be able to find your keys:

1. You are in labor.

2. You have cut your thumb off with a kitchen knife.

3. It is a freaking monsoon and your car windows are open.

I fly out of bed and downstairs, dig frantically through my purse for my keys, finally find them buried under crap on the table, and go flying out the front door into the downpour in my bare feet and pjs. Thank God I wasn’t napping naked for once. (Just kidding.)

By the time I get to my car, I am completely soaked. Fortunately, the inside of my car wasn’t as bad. I rolled up the windows and then debated what to do. On top of the Ark building quantities of rain, there was also “frequent and dangerous lightening” crashing down around me. Finally I decided to pull my car around to the back of our house and at least park it in the driveway so someone wouldn’t hit it while driving in the storm. Not that I could actually park IN the garage since *somebodies* trailer is in my spot. (Love you, baby!)

So I park, open the garage door, and then wait for a brief pause in the lightening before I jump out of my car and make a run for it. As soon as I am out the door, I hear some guys voice yelling “HEY!” at me. As if I’m going to stop in my second (okay, first) shower of the day and find out what he wants. I continued my dash and made it inside without being struck by lightening. I have no idea who it was that yelled. Maybe it was one of the neighbors wanting to comment on more of my fine attire.

After my mad dash into the monsoon

These pictures do not do justice to how soaked I was. Or how hot my pajamas are.

The third time was later that day when it stopped raining and I went out to get the mail. Our neighbor who lives on the other side of us has a new girlfriend whom I have not yet met. She just happened to step outside to make a phone call as I was traipsing back into the house in my third set of pjs for the day. (The first pair got wet because I was washing our carpet and didn’t roll the legs up.) And of course she’s this really cute and nice girl who, even though I wasn’t even making eye contact (which all people who live in neighborhoods know is code for “I’m acting like you aren’t here right now!”), she gives a very chirpy “Hi!” I reluctantly lift my head, mumble hi, and hurry back inside. Sorry, Neighbors-New-Cute-Girlfriend. You seemed very sweet from our brief exchange and I promise to be nicer the next time we meet.

Those of you who watched ‘Gilmore Girls’ now want to kill me because that song is probably stuck in your heads.

Summer is absolutely flying by. Nothing like taking 3 summer classes to keep you busy until you realize “Wait a minute, I never got a break!” And the sucky part is, this is my last year as a college student and (was) my last chance for a summer vacation. Since I have given up my dream (Ha!) of being a teacher, I doubt that any job I get will say “Sure, you can take 3 months off work and still have a job when you return!” Oh well. It is the price I pay for graduating in May and not having to take 15-18 credit hours my last two semesters.

Shane and I have been married two months today. It’s very bizarre to realize it has been that long. It really doesn’t feel like it has been. (Yay honeymoon period!) I don’t know if it is truly the case or if I’m just paying more attention now but there seems to be more radio shows and books being announced about how to have a successful marriage. (Or it could be that I’m actually listening to talk radio and not flipping the channel the second I hear words and no music. Goodbye Radio Disney, hello NPR!)

So far we’ve gotten married and went to Mexico. I took (and aced) a Jazz for Listeners class first summer session. Jazz is some complicated music! But I found most of it enjoyable.

We joined a new house church at Trinity since JustFaith ended in May. Then a couple of weeks ago, we had to get up in front of the entire church along with some other JustFaithers and tell the congregation about our experience with the class. Have I mentioned that I hate public speaking? I’m pretty good at it but it makes me so nervous. I’m really hoping that more people at Trinity will want to join the JustFaith group. It is a ton of reading and thinking and stretching and growing but it is so worth it. Shane and I don’t look at our lives or our faith the same way anymore. (I hope for the better. Nobody really knows if they’re getting it “right”. All we can hope is that we’re getting it more right than we used to.) I intend to write a blog about my experience with JF. If any of you are feeling stagnant in your faith or you just want to challenge yourself, I strongly encourage you to check it out.

I finally cleared the last of my stuff out of my dad’s house. I had thought I got it all but I still had quite a few boxes of old toys up in the attic. We brought everything home and I started going through it all. It looked like someone had bombed a Mattel/Pleasant Company store in our living room. (Okay, more like the bottom half of our house.) Barbies and American Girls galore! But I now have things mostly organized and condensed into just a few boxes. I know I should probably sell the stuff but I just can’t. That’s my childhood! Plus, you never know if we’ll have a girl and then she can play with all that stuff. I know, total pack rat mentality. But I’ve been working hard on getting rid of things that I never wear or that I never put out but hold onto because it reminds me of something. You can’t assign emotions to objects. That’s how clutter happens. But I digress.

See? Much more condensed. (Not shown: the 3 huge tubs of Barbies and AG dolls.)

Reason 20 for why we can't host house church yet...

...our downstairs looks like IKEAs going out of business sale.

I have also declared a jihad on nature! (Can’t wait to see what search engine terms bring people here from that sentence…) We have had the weirdest infestation of rolly pollies in our house. Not ants (though we had those for, like, a day!), not cockroaches (thank God! I’ll take the rolly pollies over those any day.), not any of the normal things that you think of when you think of when you think “I should call an exterminator.” Rolly effing pollies. I still have no idea how they were getting in. I didn’t even realize how bad the infestation was getting until I had to move one of our chairs in the living room and it looked like the opening scene from ‘Saving Private Ryan: The Rolly Polly Edition’ underneath.

See all those little black dots? Dead rolly pollies. And that’s after I vacuumed once!

So we did some research on what kills rolly pollies and then I headed off to Lowes, prepared to wipe out the rolly polly race. Do you have any idea how many different things you can buy to kill insects? A lot. So I went to the customer service desk to get help. Three different young men gave me aid. (Though I think they were more interested in my cleavage than my rolly polly killing needs.) So I listened to what they said, nodded, thanked them, then went in search of someone who looked like they might kill rolly pollies for a living. I found a very nice older gentleman who helped me find something to put outside and then an inside, kitty-safe, rolly polly killer. I thanked him, made my purchases, and went home to declare war. So far the stuff seems to be working. I’ve been vacuuming and washing our downstairs carpet and have yet to see any new bodies.

In other news, I know every woman who has trouble keeping her weight down is going to bitch slap me for this, but I have been having trouble keeping weight on. I used to average at about 135. I have now been recently weighed 3 times for 3 different doctor visits and they have all said 120. At 5’7″, the lowest I can go and still be healthy is 118. While this isn’t that big a deal, and I am still in the healthy range, it has brought about the frustration of none of my clothes fitting. I used to wear size 9, sometimes 11 depending on the stores sizing for women. (Or 8, in the adult section. Yes, I still shop in Juniors.) However, according to Targets chart, I am down to a size 4. aka: all of my clothes are falling off! I honestly cannot remember the last time I was this skinny. And while the vain part of me is cheering, A: this means that I have to pretty much buy all new clothes, and B: I’m concerned about why I can’t keep weight on. This is a new development and my getting sick all the time can only account for some of it. (Especially since now that I live in a house that isn’t infested with mold, just rolly pollies, I’m not sick near as much as I used to be.)

Finally, not only is today Shane’s and my two month anniversary, it is also the day that the Droid X came out! (I know half of you just went “Huh?” Don’t worry, I wouldn’t know either if I hadn’t had to hear about it for the last month.) In April I had to say good-bye to my beautiful LG Verizon phone and switch over to T-Mobile with a phone that Shane had bought off of ebay so that I wouldn’t be phoneless. While I am forever grateful that he did this and while the phone did what I needed it to do, it was a sucky, sucky phone. It became even more sucky after I dropped it in a puddle of water at Julie’s bachelorette party. It would turn itself off and text messages weren’t getting through and it was just bad. Plus, T-Mobile. Folks, let me just say, they are cheap for a reason. I have exactly 2 reasons for having a cell phone: one is because we don’t have a land line and my pet sitting customers need to be able to get a hold of me. The second is safety. Well, okay, a third reason is that I actually despise chatting on the phone and prefer to text. But ultimately, I could live without that. T-Mobiles network is so unreliable that I don’t get reception within 10 feet of one of my customers houses. She lives near Broad Ripple, not in the middle of a corn field. So I told Shane that when we could, I wanted out of T-Mobiles contract and I wanted to go with another carrier. Preferably Verizon because I never had any problems with them. So he found a new fancy, schmancy phone that he wanted on Verizon and a similar one on Sprint. Then began the huge debate. Verizon vs. Sprint. Ultimately the biggest downside to Verizon is their price. No wonder they got an F in the ‘The Better World Shopping Guide’. (I actually don’t even know how a cell phone company can get an F. Too many towers polluting the earth?) The thing that finally ended that debate was that my brother, cousin, and father all got the phone on Sprint’s network that Shane had been looking at and it was too slow. So Verizon it was. Then began the countdown. “Two weeks until the Droid X comes out.” “Seven days until the Droid X comes out.” “24 hours until the Droid X comes out.” How do you know when your husband isn’t listening to you? He’s reading about the Droid X. Again. So today, the Verizon store that we were getting our phones from opened at 8AM. Shane wanted to be there at 7. (Actually, he wanted to camp out all night to make sure he was first in line. I vetoed that.) This meant our alarm went off at 5:30 this morning. Love means never having to say “I’m sorry I’m insane and drug you out of bed while it was still dark out.” Actually, he let me sleep until almost 6:30. Three hours and two phones later, we have a contract with Verizon and two new toys to play with.

My husband the addict

He's smiling because he has a Droid X. I'm smiling because I get to go back to bed.

My brother is an amazing person and today is his birthday. Twenty-two years ago, I became a big sister for the first time. I loved my little brother! He suffered so many dress up episodes, it’s a wonder he turned out as normal as he did.

We did everything together when we were little. Then I had a girl my age move in next door when I was 10 and I turned evil. But my brother forgave me for every time I yelled at him to get out of my room or excluded him from playing. He has such a beautiful heart and I am blessed to call him my brother.

He was always the class clown and made everyone laugh and he still is today. Whenever I’m in a funk, I know that talking to him will more than likely cheer me up. And he constantly made Mikayla laugh. Often when I heard her laugh drifting down the hall, it was because of something he had done or said.

In some ways, he’s gotten the short end of the stick being the middle child AND the only boy. But he handles it so well. He plays the part of big and little brother with ease. He’s protective of both Mikayla and I and I know he would go to the ends of the earth for both of us. We are lucky girls to have him for a brother.

He learned to swing dance and then taught me how. He even choreographed and danced a piece with me for Student Choreography one year. He is the only person I trust to flip me while dancing. 🙂

He is sweet and caring, even though he hides it with humor. I know that one day he will make a very lucky woman a wonderful husband. But for now, he gets to put up with his older sister pestering him and embarrassing him with blog posts.

Happy birthday, Joshua! You are the best brother I could ask for and I’m so happy you were born. As far as I’m concerned, those fireworks the day before are for you! I love you!!!!

Nothing about our big wedding is going to be typical. For starters, it’s not the day we’re getting married. We will have been married for a year (which will hopefully take at least a little of the stress out). We’re also not registering for gifts. We’re not renting a regular reception hall and we’re not getting married in a church. In fact, I plan to give the bridal industry as little of our money as possible.

Yes, that includes my wedding dress. And my bridesmaid’s dresses. I told the 5 of them to pick out a dress that they loved and felt beautiful in in a certain color. I gave them some guidelines for what I’d like to see so that they don’t all look COMPLETELY different. But we are not going to David’s Bridal and picking out a style that everyone likes and looks good in. I don’t have the time or the patience to do that again. I’ve been a bridesmaid too many times.

Which is what led me to the decision that I am not buying my dress from a traditional bridal store. Absolutely not. The practices of bridal salespeople alone make me want to shake them.

“No, I’m not going to tell you my budget because then you will bring out a more expensive dress than I told you I could afford because you know that women generally fall in love with the first dress they try on!”

Not to mention I have experienced the RUDEST women working in bridal stores. They suck up to the bride but the bridesmaids get looks and eye rolls and short answers to their questions. (I’ve also heard stories of the BRIDE being treated rudely. Um, she’s about to give you hundreds to thousands of dollars for a dress that she will wear ONCE in her life. I’d be nice if I were you.)

Originally I didn’t want to even enter a bridal store but I have since realized that I probably should at least try some on so I know what looks good. Then when I either A: order it online or B: make it myself, I can do so with much more confidence then I can right now. I generally know what looks good on me and what I want but that’s a lot of money to risk going completely blind.

Also, my mother-in-law expressed a desire to go with me when I try dresses on. So off the bridal store we shall go.